


Titanic

by She_comes_to_me_when_I_dream



Category: Panic! at the Disco, Ryden - Fandom, rydon - Fandom
Genre: M/M, Panic! at the Disco - Freeform, Ryden, Rydon, Titanic - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-04
Updated: 2015-11-05
Packaged: 2018-04-30 00:06:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5143097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/She_comes_to_me_when_I_dream/pseuds/She_comes_to_me_when_I_dream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryden Titanic AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so I decided to write a Ryden Titanic AU. I know it's cliche but I couldn't help it. Obviously this is an au because clearly a man being engaged to a man was not happening in 1912 and there are some differences in this compared to the movie but I hope you all enjoy anyway.

Titanic  
A Ryden AU

Disclaimer: Okay obviously this is not real. All rights to Titanic belong to Titanic and I do not own any people in this fic. It never happened.

 

Prologue  
Las Vegas, Nevada  
1990

"R-Ryan!" Brendon forced his voice to work. "Honey!" He couldn't believe what he was looking at on the news.

"Brendon, what's wrong?" Ryan, his lover of seventy-eight years, appeared in the doorway of their living room, moving as quickly as he could at his advanced age.

"Look." Brendon was still having trouble getting words out as he pointed to the television screen with a trembling finger.

It took a moment for Ryan's eyes to focus as they were so old but he saw it. He saw the drawing from another time. It was in a small glass tray of salt water so it wouldn't disintegrate.

It was just as old as he was. It was drawn by his hand. It was unmistakably his Brendon reclining on a sofa wearing only the large heart shaped diamond for which apparently some treasure hunters wanted the whereabouts, a diamond that Brendon still owned. It was dated April 14, 1912 with the initals G. R. R III in the lower right hand corner in his handwriting.

"I'll be goddamned." Ryan managed, but just barely.

 

Chapter One

April 10th, 1912

Twenty-one year old George Ryan Ross III had just won the luckiest game of poker of his life in a shitty Southampton pub against a couple of Norwegians. It wasn't so lucky however, that he was about to miss boarding the ship for which he had won tickets. And who cared if they were steerage tickets? He was going to be setting sail on the R.M.S Titanic, "the ship of dreams" that everyone had been talking about for months. He had less than five minutes to make his way down the dock and up the ship's gangplank and he was running for his life, taking large inhales of the fresh paint and salt air.

Meanwhile, Brendon Urie had boarded with his widowed mother Grace and his fiancé Shane Valdes. As he looked around at the gleaming woodwork and lavish surroundings of he and Shane’s first class stateroom, he couldn’t think of a worse way to be spending his twentieth birthday that was in two days time. He was only marrying into Shane’s family of famous art collectors and critics because of his family’s financial problems which had begun when his father had died. He didn’t want to see his mother struggling to scrape by or begging on the street. He knew all too well that the world wasn’t kind to people who weren’t of status.

“Do you want this one up-” One of the attendants assigned to their suite of rooms began to ask, gesturing to a copy of a painting done in the style of cubism by Picasso.  
Brendon nodded. “The paintings would vastly improve this room.”

“Those again?” Shane scoffed, gesturing to the grouping of copies of impressionist paintings by a sofa. Brendon felt himself rolling his eyes. Art critics really knew nothing about art. It was sad that most of Paris felt the same way Shane did about impressionism. “At least they were cheap.”

“The difference between Shane and I’s taste in art is that I actually have some.” Brendon told the attendant straightening the painting that was now on the wall.

“Say what you will Brendon but I assure you that Piccaso or whatever his name is will never amount to anything.”

Brendon simply ignored him and walked into the bedroom to unpack a steamer trunk. Shane could really grate on his nerves sometimes. Well, he could grate on his nerves most of the time. If you asked Brendon they were a match made in hell. But he needed the money. He’d be a good husband. His family need the Valdes’ money. That’s what he kept telling himself.

***

Ryan Ross was sure he was looking up at the most beautiful person he’d ever laid eyes on the next afternoon from a polished wood bench on the third class deck. His pencil stopped moving and he slowly closed his leatherbound sketchbook.

He was a man in a waist jacket in rich light green silk with black hair and dark eyes that contrasted gorgeously with his pale skin. Ryan knew he would never in his life have a chance with someone like him but he couldn’t stop staring. In fact his eyes stayed on the lovely stranger until he left the railing with another man.

Ryan’s eyes returned to the drawing in progress after a dazed moment, the man slipping from his mind altogether.  
He wouldn’t even think about him again until later on that very evening.

***

Brendon walked right passed Ryan without noticing him that chilly night, evening clothes in disarray. He tried to keep his eyes from welling. He had just come from the dinner service, or more technically he had just come from his stateroom where he had smashed several things and pretty much destroyed a lot of it. What was he thinking agreeing to marry Shane?

He had to save his family.

Where was his life going? He was going to have to be stuck in a perfect little box forever, never to have an opinion or freedom of his own, suffocated.

He had to save his family from ruin though.

He found himself climbing up to the other side of the railing on the stern of the ship. He stared at the black water swirling below him. Jump into the water and no more box. He couldn’t quite bring himself to let go, not that he was sure why.

“Don’t.”

“Excuse me?” Brendon demanded, looking over his shoulder at the rail thin man who approached him cautiously.

“You don’t want to jump.” Ryan told him. “I will pull you back over. Give me your hand.”

“You don’t know that. You don’t know me. You don’t know what I want to do.” Brendon snapped. He wasn’t even sure what he wanted to do right then.

“Please give me your hand.” Ryan tried again. “The water down there is not a nice way to die. I once fell through thin ice in the middle of winter. Falling into water that cold is nothing but pain. Trust me, I know.” He wound the yellow scarf he was wearing tighter around his neck.

Brendon weighed his options and truthfully, jumping still seemed like an extemely tempting escape. He only changed his mind at the last second, feeling a twinge of fear for what he was about to do for the first time. “Alright.”

Ryan exhaled in relief. He helped Brendon ease around to where he was facing him. “Ryan Ross. I thought you should at least know my name.”

“Brendon Urie.”

Ryan began to pull Brendon forward but Brendon lost his footing on the slippery railing. He shrieked, literally clinging to Ryan for dear life. Was he really going to jump a moment prior?! This would be typical of Brendon’s life, deciding he didn’t want to die or at least that he didn’t want to die by freezing to death in the ocean and then having the universe make it happen anyway.

“Hey! I won’t let you fall. Don’t panic. I won’t let you fall.” Ryan attempted to make him calm down enough so that he could get his feet back up on the railing but Brendon still screaming his head off at his possible immenient death. Ryan heaved upward and by some miracle Brendon’s feet made contact with the rail again. Ryan took a deep breath and dragged him over on to the deck.

They both collapsed, tumbling over, Brendon shaking and shouting as he hadn’t quite realized he was safe yet, Ryan landing on top of him. Soon they were surrounded by Shane who had been looking for him since Brendon since he had left the meal so abruptly, Shane’s personal body guard Zack Hall, and three of the ship’s officers, one of which who ripped Ryan away from Brendon.

“I want him arrested!” Shane was furious after taking in Ryan, a third class passenger, on top of Brendon, Brendon flailing and yelling, and what the situation appeared to be.

“Shane.” Brendon spoke up but wasn’t heard.

Shane had turned to Ryan who was being restrained by two men. “What the hell made you think you could touch-”

“Shane!”

Everyone’s eyes moved to Brendon. “It was my fault, I was leaning over the side and slipped. I suppose I had a bit too much to drink. Mr. Ross saved my life.”

Everyone’s gaze was on Ryan now. The officers holding him loosened their grip.

“Is that what happened, then?” One of them asked.

Brendon was pleading with him to tell them what actually happened and that he was considering suicide with his large, terrified brown eyes.  
Ryan nodded and now Brendon was the one breathing deeply in relief as someone wrapped a blanket around him while Ryan was released, while everyone decided that Ryan was hero instead of a criminal.


	2. Chapter Two

Chapter Two

“I am aware that you are unhappy.” Shane announced as he walked into Brendon’s bedroom where Brendon was sitting by a basin after having removed the small amount of almost unnoticeable makeup he tended to wear to enhance his features. Brendon had come in here to escape his life for a few hours, not that being in this room really was much of an escape considering it was on the ship taking him to his marriage with Shane. He had not come into his bedroom to be reminded by Shane of the state his life was in. “Though I cannot imagine why.”

It took all of Brendon’s strength to not start screaming or break down in tears or both. Of course his fiancé wouldn’t have a clue as to why he was hanging off the back of the ship and Shane was so self-absorbed just like everyone else in his world that he definitely didn’t know that it was a purposeful act. Nobody else knew why Brendon could possibly be unhappy and anyway, Shane thought he was a gift to both the art world and the Earth in general. Who wouldn’t be happy to marry him?

“I was going to give this to you after we arrived in New York City at the engagement gala,” Shane placed a thick gray velvet box on the table in front of Brendon, “but I suppose I will give it to you now.” 

Brendon would have been lying if he had told people his mouth hadn’t gone slightly agape when Shane opened up the box. Cushioned inside was a gigantic deep blue diamond cut into a shape of a heart surrounded by diamonds, and set in platinum on a chain of diamonds.

“La couer de la mer.”

“The heart of the ocean.” Brendon translated quietly.

“It was worn by Louis XVI. A reminder of how I feel about you.”

You don’t feel anything for me. I’m a piece of property to you. Brendon wanted to spit at Shane as he closed the chain around Brendon’s neck. Brendon couldn’t help but feel that the diamond symbolized everything that was weighing him down.

***

“Why are you helping me? I do not mean to sound ungrateful because I really am grateful-” Ryan could be awkward to begin with but his nerves being through the roof because of Brendon Urie’s fiancé inviting him to dine with them tonight after he had saved Brendon the previous night didn’t help his rambling that had begun. Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III, a loud, boisterous man who had been with Brendon’s mother and several others when he and Ryan had met up with them on the upper promenade deck earlier in the evening had very pointedly asked him what he was going to wear among other things. He had whisked Ryan off to his stateroom after Brendon and the rest of the group had gone back to their own to dress for dinner.

Ryan had been getting to know Brendon since mid-morning when Brendon showed up to the third class to thank him again for pulling him back over the railing and had conversed with him all day on the first class deck. Brendon was so much more than his life would allow him to be and it depressed him. He wanted to run away and go into music or really anything that would allow him to create. He seemed to long for Ryan’s lifestyle that of which Ryan had told him many stories: going anywhere and everywhere with a sketchbook and a guitar. Brendon, unfortunately, was trapped in an arranged marriage to a man he didn’t love and who he was sure only saw him as a possession to flaunt to solve his family’s debts. He felt he would never live the life he wanted to or accomplish anything. Ryan couldn’t help but think that Brendon would live the same way if he lived under circumstances and he felt saddened for him. Ryan had gotten chills up his spine watch Brendon discuss his passion for music and the arts with him. He hoped Brendon hadn’t noticed him blushing from them.

Now Ryan was standing in Pete’s bedroom opening a box which contained a formal tuxedo that Pete had bought for a relative of his while in Paris and that Pete thought might be a little big, but would fit him fine for one night. There was no chance that Ryan could wear one of Pete’s suits because Pete was at least a good foot and several inches shorter than he was.

“I’ve taken a liking to Brendon and you helped him when he needed it. He’s one of the only people on the ship who doesn’t give me these looks like I’m going to rob them or some horrible thing when they aren’t looking.” Pete cut him off. He continued touching up and flattening his hair with grease from a jar by a porcelain wash basin in front of the mirror. His natural hair was way too wild to be left alone during the day. The only way to put it was that his hair wasn’t white enough for these times. 

“I have my own problems. I do not care that you are third class because I am still relatively new money and truthfully I am wearing my parents thin by not going into their law practice and pursuing being a musician. People look at us both similarly. You because you are not a man of status and me because of well...” Pete tapped the skin on his face which was the slightest bit darker than everyone else’s in first class. “I have relatives on my father’s side that are black. People here tend not to like that. They think they are being discreet but it is clear to me that I am only accepted because I’m light enough that I can usually pass for a white man and if I didn’t have money that probably wouldn’t be enough.”

“I travel with a guitar on my back.” Ryan offered, trying to cut the tension that had built up in the room. He honestly did not care about Pete’s skin color and he felt that even if he did he was in a position in life that would make him have no business caring about it anyway. “I’ve played on the side of so many nameless streets.” 

This sent them both into a heated conversation about different composers and the upcoming styles of music of the day as Ryan pulled the many elaborate pieces of the suit on. It took him a good five minutes to finish but Pete nodded his approval when Ryan was standing in front of the mirror nitpicking and making final adjustments to himself.

***

Heat filled Brendon’s entire body as Ryan bent and kissed his white gloved hand. Ryan’s eyes, which were a thick, syrupy honey brown color, were even more beautiful to Brendon than they were when they had been walking together that day. Brendon was simply breathtaking in his tuxedo to Ryan and Ryan knew he could never compare to such a gorgeous being as he stood up straight, releasing Brendon’s hand.

Ryan followed Brendon’s spine down to the generous swelling of his rear in his black pants when Brendon walked over to his mother and Shane to announce Ryan’s presence. Grace Urie still looked extremely uncomfortable with Ryan and Ryan knew that was not his imagination but then again, that wasn’t as bad as Pete’s situation as everyone tended to look slightly uncomfortable with him.

Brendon only stayed briefly with Shane and his mother and Ryan tried not to blush when he noticed he felt slightly victorious when he realized Brendon was coming back over to him. Brendon leaned into him and both seemed to take sharp intakes of air at being so close. He began pointing people out to Ryan. 

“That’s John Jacob Astor. He’s the richest man on the ship. His wife Madeline there is around my age and in delicate condition. See how she’s trying to hide it?” Brendon smirked.   
“That’s Benjamin Guggenheim and his mistress. See her?” Brendon’s smirk grew even larger. “That’s Lady Duff Gordon. She designs naughty lingerie.” Brendon willed himself not to think about Ryan wearing nothing but women’s silk stockings and swallowed hard. He didn’t have to because Pete Wentz was suddenly by their side and dinner was being called.

Dinner was a headache and a half. Pete had to explain to Ryan to work his way from the outside in with the silverware and Brendon’s mother had no end to her questions that were conjured up to purposefully make Ryan uncomfortable and remind him that along with being third class, that he didn’t belong with them at the table.

“Must you leave?” Brendon couldn’t control the pout he knew was on his lips at the end of the meal when Ryan was getting ready to return to his part of the ship and the first class men were heading off to drink.

Ryan stared at Brendon’s mouth, in a daze for a moment before kissing his hand once more. Brendon felt him slip something into his palm. It was a note he would find out when   
Ryan walked off and out of the dining room. Brendon’s heart raced as he read it.

Meet me at the clock.


End file.
